Former Citizen of the Year John Cutrozzola is decrying the "secretive" process used to pick the winning bid for a huge downtown redevelopment.

John Cutruzzola, Brampton's former citizen of the year, is suing the city for $27.5 million.

By:San GrewalUrban Affairs Reporter, Published on Wed Jul 13 2011

Brampton’s former citizen of the year, whose work and philanthropy has been compared to the Mirvish family’s in Toronto, is suing the city for $27.5 million.

But John Cutruzzola, a developer and longtime arts patron who has received numerous civic awards, says it’s not about scoring financially. “Any money I might get out of this will be given back to the city in one way or another.”

He just wants to make a point about a new European-style selection process, called competitive dialogue, that was used to pick competitor Dominus as the builder for a huge downtown redevelopment that includes expanding the city hall he built. He thinks the public has a right to know more about it.

The lawsuit filed by his company, Inzola Group Ltd., in Ontario Superior Court last week claims the city unfairly disqualified the company from the selection process for the project, which could cost half a billion dollars and also includes office and commercial space, a library and parking.

“The city’s actions reflect a fundamental failure to observe core requirements of fairness, transparency and public accountability,” documents filed with the court claim. “As a result of the wrongful exclusion of Inzola’s submission, the city has caused damage to Inzola and is now wasting tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars on a significantly more expensive project that delivers less and is less beneficial to Brampton’s residents.”

None of Inzola’s allegations has been proven in court. The city said it would file a statement of defence and defend itself against the claim “vigorously.”

Inzola’s claim says a secrecy agreement that had to be signed after companies had entered the selection process was too far-reaching and should not have asked bidders to keep information about their bids from the public “forever.”

After repeatedly asking city staff why he had to sign the unusual privacy agreement, Cutruzzola said he would talk to city council about the issue. Shortly after, he says, he was disqualified for attempting to address council about it. Only two companies were left in the bidding.

“I have been named citizen of the year, businessman of the year. I have dozens of plaques for my work in the community,” Cutruzzola told the Star. “This is the city I love. Do you know how much it pains me to turn around and sue this government?”

He said the project has been surrounded in controversy because of the secretive process.

One feature of “competitive dialogue” is a “fairness advisor,” an impartial party whose role is to guarantee integrity and ethical standards, partly because the process does not involve council in that role.

The suit questions why the city chose a fairness advisor who is the same person the city paid to design its process — and in fact helped convince the city to use the process in the first place, in what is believed to be a Canadian first.

The $27.5 million demanded in the suit is a calculation of the profits Inzola would have made had it won the bid. The Inzola bid for the whole project was tens of millions of dollars less than the Dominus bid, which will charge $205 million for the first of three phases. Cutruzzola said the city threatened to sue him when he recently disclosed the details of his disqualified bid.

“This is not a fight between me and Dominus,” he says. “If they won fair and square, I would have no problem. But citizens deserve to be protected if they’re going to be spending millions and millions of dollars on this. This new competitive dialogue process is new to Canada. It’s not meant for this type of procurement, where the public’s interest needs to be protected.”

“I just want to get to the roots and facts of why my company was treated this way. Inzola was disqualified because it didn’t want information to be kept from the public. People in this city are tired of what’s happening here. We are stuck. They want to get to the truth, and hopefully this will be a step.”

What’s ‘competitive dialogue’?

Becoming popular in the European Union, the competitive dialogue procedure is used in public-private partnerships to find a bidder who can best fulfill the need and come in on-budget, rather than just put in the cheapest bid.

What: “Competitive dialogue” means selected bidders can be invited to talk with the city about how best to fulfill its technical and other requirements before the final selection is made. This allows and encourages bidders to offer the best plan and most accurate figure they can, because under the eventual contract the city can hold them to the bid.

Why: It may provide more innovative solutions in complex projects and protect cities from simply going with the lowest bidder and then facing cost overruns because the selected bid was unrealistic.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.